1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the increasing use of one-spot quench cars in horizontal coke oven battery operations wherein the discharge of coke from a coke oven into a coke quench car is required to be sealed from the atmosphere to prevent escape of noxious gases. One means for sealing the discharge operation is to enclose the coke guide car and the coke quench car with a hood. To enable the use of a hood the coke quench car must remain stationary, thus the term of art has developed denominating such a car as a "one-spot" coke quench car. Specifically, this invention relates to a means for evenly distributing the coke loaded into a one-spot quench car.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The original mode of operation of a horizontal coke oven battery included discharging of the coke into a quench car which was slowly drawn past the end of the coke guide as the coke dropped into the hopper of the quench car. In this manner the coke was fairly evenly dispersed throughout the hopper. However, the discharge operation was not sealed and the gases from the hot discharging coke were expelled into the atmosphere.
Recent studies have made the coke industry aware of the problems inherent with coke discharge gases being expelled into the atmosphere, resulting in measures being taken to prevent those problems. A major approach to the problem has been to contain the discharge gases followed by cleaning them of their obnoxious impurities before expulsion into the atmosphere.
A prevalent method of containing the coke discharge gases is to enclose the whole discharge system, including the coke oven door, the coke guide car and the coke quench car. However, this method prevents the slow progression of movement of the coke quench car past the coke guide. Therefore, a quench car is called for that remains stationary while being filled with discharging coke. This concept, and the car, are denominated as a "one-spot quench car" system.
Because of one-spot coke quench car remains stationary, there is a problem in evenly dispersing the coke in the hopper of the car. The coke ejected from a coke oven is in the form of rather large blocks or chunks which are brittle and friable. These blocks or chunks must be evenly dispersed within the coke quench car. If the coke is not dispersed to the remote ends of the car during the discharge operation, the coke piles up in front of the coke guide exit and blocks the further discharge of coke. If the coke is not evenly dispersed in the quench car when the coke is quenched, an uneven cooling of the coke results, causing a diminishment in the quality of coke produced. Attempts have been made to incorporate deflectors into the path of the coke as it moves from the coke guide into the one-spot quench car but these have proved to be unsatisfactory as they limit the overall capacity of the quench car, do not adequately break up the blocks of coke, and prevent coke from being evenly dispersed just in front of the coke guide exit.
Other attempts have been made to redesign the quench car hopper to make it shorter yet deeper and wider. Such attempts have proved practical in new coke oven battery installations where everything can be designed to accommodate the radically redimensioned quench cars. However, this approach is economically impractical for modification of existing coke oven batteries. The reason is that the vertical distance from the bottom of the coke guide down to the track level of the quench car is preset. Also, the height of the coke wharf, where the coke is dumped from the quench car, above the same track level, is also preset.
There is a need to provide a means for evenly dispersing the coke throughout the hopper of a one-spot coke quench car which can be economically incorporated into existing coke oven batteries for use with standard sized coke quench cars enabling their use in the one-spot method of coke discharge.